


First Appointment

by pencilguin



Series: Fictober 2018 [16]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: First Meetings, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 03:16:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16673674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pencilguin/pseuds/pencilguin
Summary: Tilly is just starting out on the Discovery and struggling with her allergies again, so it looks like she'll have to venture down to medbay and face her new doctor.





	First Appointment

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on Tumblr as part of the Fictober 2018 challenge. Unbeta'd; I apologize for any mistakes that might still be in there.

When Tilly walked back into her quarters she was greeted by the sight of her roommate zipping her bag shut and slinging it over her shoulder.

“Maggie?” she asked, grinning nervously. “What is happening?”

Maggie—Magdaléna—gave her a slightly exhausted look.

“I’m leaving. I’m sorry, Tilly. I requested to switch quarters so I can finally sleep again.”

Tilly blinked, the smile melting off her face at the words.

“B-but it’s been only a few days … I already sent my request over to medical, I’m sure it will be taken care of soon …”

“Tilly, I’m sorry,” Maggie said, and her sad expression looked genuine. “But I’ve already got enough trouble sleeping as it is, and your snoring … it’s just too much. See you.”

And with that, she was out the door, and Tilly was standing in her now solitary quarters, alone.

It took a lot of effort not to cry.

 

***

 

Later that evening, after she had calmed down a little and gathered all of her courage, Tilly made her way over to medbay. It wasn’t, she always told herself, like she was scared of doctors in general. “Scared” was too strong a word for it anyway, probably. She was just really anxious and nervous and maybe a little terrified around the ones she wasn’t familiar with. Which, yeah, admittedly was still most of them.

Her doctor back at home had basically become a part of the family after all those years, with Tilly’s long history of allergies and some really bad acne early in her puberty, and a few mental health issues—not to mention her various scientific endeavours going wrong and on some occasions literally blowing up in her face. She had been almost like a mother figure to Tilly, more than her biological mother at times.

Her regular doctor during her years at Starfleet academy had still been very young herself, and after the initial nervousness on Tilly’s part the two of them had bonded pretty quickly and become good friends. Tilly still missed her painfully. She had tried to pull a few strings so that Tilly’s allergy would be taken care of during her year on the ship, but with her last-minute reassignment to the Discovery all of that had gotten messed up and they didn’t have the data or the necessary items for her quarters.

And now the medbay doors slid open and she took a tentative step inside, trying her best not to turn around and run as far away as the confines of the ship allowed. The room was busy, and she just stood there for several awkwardly long moments, unsure what to do or whom to approach. Her discomfort grew with every second, brain starting to plot out one terrible and humiliating scenario after another—

“Hello, how can I help you, Cadet?”

Tilly jumped, to her own embarrassment letting out a small squeaking noise at the same time, right in front of the doctor who had approached her and pulled her out of her thoughts.

“Uh, yes, I’m—I’m here about, uh, because of my allergy, because I still haven’t heard back about that, so …” She cleared her throat. Her entire face was burning. “… Yeah.”

The Doctor gave her a warm and reassuring smile that immediately calmed her nerves, at least a little. “Of course. This way, please.”

She followed him to the only empty bio bed in the room, where she sat down on the edge of the bed. She didn’t know what exactly she had expected from her visit to medbay, but it certainly hadn’t been a distractingly handsome doctor making her feel nervous for entirely different reasons.

“I’m Doctor Culber,” he said. “You’re Cadet Sylvia Tilly, right?”

Tilly’s eyes widened as she watched him pull up her files on the monitor.

“You know my name?”

There was the smile again. Whoever got to see that every day, she thought, had to be a very lucky person.

“I know every crew member on board, and that includes you.” He turned back to the monitor, frowning slightly as he scrolled through the data. “Allergy, you said?”

Tilly nodded.

“‘Allergic to polyester and viscoelastic polyurethane foam. I’ve got something here … a report from your doctor back on Earth. But there must have been a mix-up somewhere down the line, looks like the request wasn’t filed correctly and got lost in the system.”

“Oh, great,” Tilly let slip before she could stop herself. “Umm—I mean, uh, I guess that must have happened in the middle of my reassignment chaos. I was supposed to get special fabric bedclothes and some adjustments to my quarters, or else I get this really bad chronic snoring.”

“Yes, on top of the noise it’s also dangerous because you might not be able to breathe properly. One of my uncles has the same issue, he even had to go to the ER once. We don’t want that happening to you, Cadet Tilly.”

Something about his entire demeanor was incredibly calming. Tilly already felt much more relaxed than she ever had for a first doctor’s appointment in her life. Against all her fears, it looked like she would be in good hands here on the Discovery.

He turned back to her.

“I’m going to fix the issue with your doctor’s request, update your records, and send it through to the central database for the bureaucratic part of it all. The ship’s records will also be adjusted so you can get special bedclothes and everything else you need from the replicator. I’ll just have to repeat the allergy test once more because the data was lost, if that’s okay for you.”

Tilly breathed a sigh of relief.

“Yes! I mean—yes, of course it is, Doctor. Thank you so much!”

Culber smiled at her again. “I’m happy to help. I’m going to need your arm, please.”

“Of course!”

She rolled her sleeve up to her elbow and held her right arm out to him. He took a device from the station that looked similar to a more high-tech hypospray. His arms were impressive, she noticed, blushing slightly, and the rest of him filled out his uniform nicely, too. Not really her type and old enough to be her father, of course, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate it. But most of all he was kind and friendly and calm; exactly the kind of doctor you’d hope for if you were a ball of nerves like Tilly was most of the time.

“So, are you settling in on the Discovery, Cadet Tilly? How were your first few days working with Lieutenant Stamets?” he asked while he started lightly pressing the device to various spots on her arm.

Her eyes widened in puzzlement.

“You actually read my whole file?”

“Sure. It’s important to know who your patients are if you want to take care of them appropriately.”

She hadn’t actually considered this before but the thought of him reading through her entire medical history was mortifying. As if it wasn’t embarrassing enough that a doctor would have to dig through that when it actually became relevant.

“I know that you finished top of all of your classes last year, that you received excellent grades from all your professors in the science department, and that you were assigned to the Discovery on the special request of Lieutenant Stamets. Impressive, truly.”

Tilly stared at him. This was not what she had expected.

“W-well … everything was a little chaotic because my transfer was decided so late … so I haven’t really had time to settle in yet. A-and being on the—on Lieutentant Stamets’ team is … it’s fascinating work, but—it’s _challenging_ …”

Another smile, more of a grin, really.

“‘Challenging’ is a good word for it. I hope he’s not being mean to you?”

She stared again. Culber chuckled.

“I know him. He can be … a little difficult. Don’t let him intimidate you too much. You’re good, Cadet Tilly, and he knows it, or he wouldn’t have asked for you.”

Tilly opened and closed her mouth a few times in silence before the right words found their way out of it.

“Thank you, Doctor.”

He squeezed her hand in a reassuring gesture, then proceeded to pull the data from the device and send it through the computer for processing.

“Some of these spots might start itching slightly over the course of the day; if it gets any worse than that, come back here. The test results are looking as expected, so I’ll see to it that the replicator gets the data for your custom order immediately. The rest will be taken care of, too.”

“Thank you,” Tilly muttered while she pulled her sleeve back down. “Um … Do you know what’s going to happen to my roommate? She requested different quarters because of my snoring, but I don’t know if this means that she can come back or …”

Culber checked the screen again, then looked something up on a PADD from the station.

“From what I can see here, Cadet Marek’s transfer is final. It looks like you have your quarters to yourself now.”

“Oh,” she responded, not without a hint of disappointment in her voice. “Okay.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Cadet Tilly?” he asked warmly.

“No.” She smiled. “Thank you for your help, Doctor.”


End file.
